The use of e-mail, instant messaging and other methods of sending electronic messages over the Internet is very popular due to the ease, availability and speed of communication. Electronic forms of communication have become integral in both business and personal settings. Text messages and other content can be created and sent with tremendous ease, with very little cost other than the cost of a networked computer. Once Internet access is obtained, a user has the ability to open multiple electronic accounts for sending and receiving messages. Most of these accounts can be opened without payment, that is, are free of charge. The ease and low cost of access to electronic accounts has given rise to abusive use in the form of spamming.
Spamming is the abuse of electronic messaging systems to indiscriminately send unsolicited bulk messages or fraudulent messages. The most widely recognized form of spam is e-mail spam. However, the term may applied to similar abuses in other media: instant messaging spam, usenet newsgroup spam, web search engine spam, spam in blogs, wiki spam, mobile phone messaging spam, Internet forum spam and junk fax transmissions.
Spam in e-mail started to become a problem when the Internet was opened up to the general public in the mid-1990s. It grew exponentially over the following years, and is estimated today to comprise some 80 to 85% of all the e-mail in the world. Instant Messaging spam, sometimes termed spim, makes use of instant messaging systems. Many IM systems offer a user directory, including demographic information that allows an advertiser to gather the information, sign on to the system, and send unsolicited messages. To send instant messages to millions of users requires scriptable software and the recipients' IM usernames. Spammers have similarly targeted Internet Relay Chat channels, using IRC bots that join channels and bombard them with advertising. Mobile phone spam is directed at the text messaging service of a mobile phone. This can be especially irritating to customers not only for the inconvenience but also because of the fee they may be charged per text message received in some markets. Many online games allow players to contact each other via player-to-player messaging, chat rooms, or public discussion areas. What qualifies as spam varies from game to game, but usually this term applies to all forms of message flooding, violating the terms of service contract for the website.
Spamming is widely reviled, and has been the subject of legislation in many jurisdictions. In addition, many users are bothered by spam because it impinges upon the amount of time they spend reading their e-mail. Many also find the content of spam frequently offensive, in that pornography is one of the most frequently advertised products. Spammers send their spam largely indiscriminately, so pornographic ads may show up in a work place or a family account.
Spamming is economically viable because advertisers that use spam to market products and services have almost no operating costs beyond the management of their mailing lists, and it is difficult to hold senders of spam accountable for their massive message campaigns. Because the world wide barriers to entry are so low to be a spammer, they are numerous, and the volume of unsolicited spam messages has increased every year. The negative costs of spam messages, such as lost productivity by those who view them and fraudulent products and/or services that are sold in this matter, are borne by the public, Internet service providers and/or message account providers. The Internet service and message account providers are forced to pay for extra processing capacity to cope with the large amount of spam messages. There is also reputation damage that may be caused by spammers. For example, spam filters may black-list a particular server if it gets a “bad reputation” for the sending of spam messages. This requires time and effort to resolve, usually by several people. There are the direct costs, as well as the indirect costs borne by the victims—both those related to the spamming itself, and to other crimes that usually accompany it, such as financial theft, identity theft, data and intellectual property theft, virus and other malware infection, fraud, and deceptive marketing.
Because spamming contravenes the vast majority of message account providers' acceptable-use policies, most spammers make a considerable effort to conceal the abusive use of their message accounts for spam messaging. For example, spam messages are often forwarded through insecure proxy servers belonging to unwitting third parties. Also, spammers frequently use false names, addresses, phone numbers, and other contact information to set up “disposable” message accounts at various providers. Additionally spammers often generate different usernames for each account. In many instances the creation of such accounts is automated to some extent so that large numbers of accounts can be created. In some cases, spammers have used falsified or stolen credit card numbers to pay for these accounts. Typically, spammers quickly move from one message account to the next as each abusive use of a message account is discovered.
Therefore, it is with respect to these considerations and others that the present invention has been made.